Response to Critics

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

To the best of my judgment on your hot reactions on my study, most of you are young people. It is very good to defend your faith. I remember myself (and now I feel shame) being even arrogant when, long ago, I was defending my belief in the Lord Jesus before atheists. It was this experience, which taught me in apologetics and how to use different approaches when encounter different personalities. All the more, I lived in a communist country until 1989. There were people who didn’t believe in God at all. So, in order to preach the Gospel, I had to persuade them to believe that the world is not a product of the blind chance but is masterly designed by God. I usually failed in my attempts. The blind chance is something adored by the enemies of God.

It is not the case with you. We share the same faith and the same basic principles of understanding of the universe. That is why I will not hesitate to give some explanations in order to avoid misunderstandings.

I am a highly educated person and claim some scientific background. I also believe in the Lord Jesus since 1971. It was at that time when I realized what “created in the image of God” means. This means that the gracious God gifted us with a part of His own abilities to be creators. Not only this – He also made us able to evaluate creatures and creations. But evaluation means distinguishing between two or more alternatives. God has made this basic characteristic of His obvious by distinguishing between light and darkness in the very beginning. Since then, the God’s acts are distinguishable in every aspect. For this purpose, He endowed us with reason, or intelligence, to a certain limit. But a basic characteristic of all us the humans, especially after the original sin, is the susceptibility to delusions. The latter could be avoided not by reason alone but only if the Lord gift us with His Spirit. The Spirit cannot be taken or bought with money but only received as a free gift.

Because the enemies of God by no means can get this Gift, they have two alternatives: to deny the existence of God and consequently His Spirit or to state that the Spirit has nothing to do with cognition. The latter alternative led to the widely accepted nowadays belief that there are two separate regions within each individual and even a division of the human personality taken as a whole: the world of the reality, which is cognitive through the laws of physics and the psychic inner world of every human – the world of the feelings and the irrational. There, they say, is the religion, which everyone chooses according to his or her own taste. Hence, religion has nothing to do with reality! From there to the cry: “There is no God!” is just one step.

This division could be perceived in the world today. It brings a psychological strain, which destroys personalities and people go mad in large numbers. It is a kind of schizophrenia (split mind, in Greek).

My belief is that it is not so with the children of God – that is, the believers in the Lord Jesus. We are integral persons and I suppose that this is what the Lord Jesus had in mind when told His disciples “But he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved” (Matt. 24:13).

So our approach should reflect our integrity. This approach includes also impartiality. I claim that my own approach to the Bible codes is such. If the Bible is the Word of God, it will be distinguished in any feature from anything created by man. In the course of the ages, this uniqueness claimed by both Jewish rabbis and Christians has been callously ridiculed by atheists. Of course, the means of the apologists matched those of the offenders. I remember the time when every now and then were printed books which “invalidated” the Bible “fables”. Communists even denied that Jesus of Nazareth did exist at all. Their “evidences” were based on “linguistic scrutiny”. How perverted their reasoning was you may see from the following example.

If the Bible appeared to be the only source for a given event, they said that no such event had taken place because there are no other sources to mention it. That is, the Bible is full of fabricated stories. On the other hand, in the cases where there are references in other sources (e.g. the Gilgamesh story about the Flood, written in cuneiform script and discovered relatively late – in the late XVIII – early XIX centuries and even later), they claimed that the Bible is a compilation of other sources, this time without any comment on whether the newly discovered source is full of fabricated stories or not. Moreover, they always argue that it is the Bible which is the later text. So the Bible has ever been under attack.

The computer era provided our generation with a powerful means of calculation. There appeared a new battlefield between the enemies of God and us. The battlefield in question is the Bible codes (mainly the Torah codes). The major weapon of the atheists is a pseudo-scientific terminology. They try to infect the minds of the public with it. “Purity of the experiment”, “a posteriori calculation of probabilities”, etc. are regularly used meaningless phrases that are used to demonstrate erudition. They don’t know that it is the Sabbath that was made for the man and not the man for the Sabbath. These are just means and as such should be used appropriately. I will give you an example in a critical note: there a Brother or Sister requires a “standard doubleblind” (probably experiment).

The term “double-blind experiment” was introduced in the sixties or early seventies in the clinical pharmacy for a specific reason. The evaluation of the effectiveness of a certain medicine is usually carried out in the following manner. Two groups of approximately equal numbers of patients are specified. The patients should be also of about the same health condition. One group is given placebo, while the other one is given the active drug. After finishing the treatment, the results obtained with the groups are statistically processed in order to be made a comparison of the groups and hence the effectiveness of the drug to be established.

It has been observed that the results are largely influenced by the personality of the doctor or the nurse, who is in direct contact with the patient. The explanation was found and it was in the unconscious exchange of information between a doctor or a nurse, who knows whether the drug to be taken by the patient is active, or placebo, and the patient. Thus, the patient got an idea what was given. So the pharmacists began to mark with codes that only they knew the two groups of medicines. Furthermore, it has been proved that even the pharmacist, who gives the marked units, passes information to the doctor at the moment of the direct contact between them. That is why, a procedure of handling the medicines was established, in which there is no direct contact between the pharmacist and the doctor, i.e. both the doctor (or nurse) and the patient are to be “blinded”.

As far as I am aware, blinding is contra-indicative in Bible studies and has nothing to do with experiments of the kind discussed here. However, as a fashion, the term may have been borrowed. In this case, my experiment is “fourteen-fold-blind” experiment. I have checked the intersections with Israel against thirteen other words.

I can also ask this Brother or Sister what does he/she mean by “disinterested party” – atheists, or mathematicians who do not know about the Holocaust?

Another claim of this Brother or Sister is an “independent verification”. Just one more meaningless phrase of the atheists’ arsenal. Let me consider the word “independent” first. This implies a third party, who must check two (or more) groups of results obtained by two (or more) teams or persons, who submit results of significant discrepancy. This should mean that someone else has discovered another method or code, so the independent jury must decide whose result is more plausible.

The word “verification” illustrates another missing of point. Results of this kind (not only my own work) can only be disproved. They can never be proved. Even more, any confirmation in this particular case is meaningless. (Unless someone suspects me as a liar or thinks that I may have recorded the displayed results erroneously.) How? Just by finding another word, which gives better results than the results submitted by me. It is another question whether this word must have something to do with the Holocaust or the establishment of the state of Israel. You may try with any of the 225 = 5,153,632 5-letter permutations in the Torah. (Israel is a 5-letter word in Hebrew.) I have tried with several of them. Or you may choose shorter words. The 4-letter permutations are only 234,256. Suppose you find a word that gives a better separation. What of that? Ah, wait. What about the year 693? Or the intersection that produces the lowest P? I haven’t included them in the calculation of the probability. If I have included them too, the overall probability would have been 10-10…

As you see, I can also boast with infinitesimally small probabilities. I did not include this figure not in order to humble myself deliberately but just because I am writing to believers. Could anybody of you say that he or she would believe if the probability is, say, 1/1,000,000, but wouldn’t believe in case it is “only”, say, 1/10,000? In my own opinion, statistics and probabilities are only to support the experimenter’s idea. Hunt for low probabilities is a vanity.

Low probabilities have their own history. The search for Bible codes started about 20 years ago. At that time, powerful computers were unavailable for the general public. Access to such computers had highly professional mathematicians or physicists only. They designed the experiments in accordance with their professional codex and used specific language to discuss the results. The enemies of God were just waiting for this. They welcomed the sophisticated terminology and turned it to juggling words. From that time remained the language, thence used by many (from both sides), who do not have the professional background and relevant experience. As a result, mimicking competence in proofs and (mostly!) refutations by inappropriate usage of this language is widely spread fashion today.

People regard mathematics as something perfect. This is not so. There are three main schools in mathematics: formalists, constructivists and intuitionists. They do not quarrel on 2 + 2 = ? level but have significant disagreements about matters like infinity or methods and criteria for proof. This is also valid for statistics. There are disputes on pro and con Bayesian approach…

In the light of the limitations of our minds, we develop different methods for study of the creation. Statistical parameters are such set of terms and notions. They are to be used properly in accordance with the particular needs. No tool is to be used without adequate necessity. I do not recommend it to anybody to become a bondservant to a hollow form without filling.

If you do not believe me about the enemies of God, consider this. Suppose these codes have been found not in the Bible but in another scripture or book(s) written by a modern author. I am absolutely certain that the resistance wouldn’t be so fierce. Why? Because, the Bible in general, and the Torah in particular, are declared to be the Word of God. I believe that here lays the major cause that makes atheists so furious. For centuries, the Rabbis claimed that there is information hidden in the Torah. This was in times when no one on Earth had even the idea that one day such thing as a computer will exist. It is this motivation that made generations of scribes to copy the Torah so carefully, that there are only 6 differences among 304,805 letters between the 2 editions of the Torah! Why did they know that one day it will be so important? The existence of codes is claimed about the Torah mostly and they are found there mostly. This is a fact. Even the unbelievers are aware that the Torah is the touchstone for any hidden codes. How it happened that the most carefully handed down document appeared to be also the most authentic source of hidden concrete information? The Torah is standing alone against all the documents ever written by man.

This fact also casts light on another pseudo-scientific claim: that of “a priori determination of the parameters of the experiment”. It is a good excuse for double standards. It is reasonable, of course, when you plan an experiment, which can yield several outcomes and you must outline the one you are interested in against any other result. It is also useful for the experimenter in order to be able to trace back every step of the development, which can allow him to make changes in each phase instead of starting always from the beginning. It is absolutely inapplicable to discoveries. To repudiate a discovery on the grounds of improperly set experiment is laughable. You either agree or disagree. In the latter case, you either undertake your own research or just say nothing. You cannot blame the author that he didn’t know in advance what he will find in an experiment. Could we say that Columbus has nothing to do with the exploration of the Americas on the grounds that he thought he has reached India? In the same way, I must be a super-genius to be able to predict everything I have found. I just had the vague idea that somehow the countries where Jews have been protected during the Holocaust could be outlined against the other ones and that the key to the code somehow is linked to the name Israel in the plain text. To my own surprise, it turned to be so.

The PCs available currently are as powerful as those used in the first experiments in Bible codes. Now any researcher has the freedom of choice in designing the experiment. Bible codes are still terra incognita. The enemies of God have always tried to strangle every new development, which could reveal the power of God. It was so at the time of translation of the Bible into vernacular European languages about 500 years ago. Remember that William Tyndale was executed because he dared to translate the Bible into English. Possession of Bibles had been banned by the Catholic Church for centuries. The technology of printing aided to defeat this ignorance. Later, believers have been ridiculed in the fields of archaeology, comparative linguistics, paleontology, even astronomy (although the gravity law was discovered by Sir Isaac Newton, the ardent believer in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Father of the Lord Jesus, as well as dedicated Bible codes researcher!). And what about the devilish din made by the atheists on the evolution some 150 years ago? The faith of many naive believers was shaken due to the pseudo-scientific claims that the creation by God has been disproved. Now, a number of even non-qualified in biology but unbiased people will say that the creation described in Genesis, chapter 1, has more to do with science than Darwinism. Everywhere the enemies of God were defeated. The modern science itself is a product and effect of these battles.

I dare think that the availability of relatively powerful computers will allow a more intuitive approach instead of the dry, strict methodology used so far. This requires abundant general culture, mostly knowledge of history. Combined with interests and basics in data processing, it could make some of you discoverers. It is a real pleasure to feel that you know something nobody else on Earth knows yet.

In conclusion, I will tell you my own concept of the Bible codes. It is something like imprints on banknotes. They do not increase or decrease banknotes’ values. They just certify their authenticity. In the same way, the codes authenticate the Word of God.